Madam, Was Your Chicken Left Unattended?

The Scene :

The kitchen, Sunday evening just after CountryFile

The Victim :

Left-over barbeque-style chicken breast, cooked for Sunday dinner, covered with foil and secured on kitchen worktop

The Crime Scene :

The Suspect :

Name:

Eddie

Age:

 7

Distinguishing Features:

Rips in both ears

 Slight swagger when walking due to a back leg injury as a kitten

Known Aliases:

"monster"

"satan's cat"

"he's evil that cat"

"monkey"

"eddiekins"

Previous convictions :

1. The taking and carrying upstairs to the bedroom of a packet of fish taken out of the freezer to defrost for tea

2. The scoffing of a bowl of grated cheese left out on the kitchen worktop ready to go on top of the pasta for tea. Two incidents.

3. Due to a strange fruit fetish, helping himself to some sliced strawberries left in a bowl on the kitchen worktop

4. The purloining of small items from the bathroom, namely a sponge and a mini bottle of bubble bath, which were carried downstairs and abandoned in the hall

5. The ability to make small tins of Vaseline simply vanish to be found several months later under the bed. His current record for this is five.

Verdict :

Guilty.........very!



New Earrings

I've got that mellow relaxed feeling at the moment, knowing I've got the next two days off work. But it does mean I'm working this weekend though........

My plans for tomorrow (Weds) are to make a start on a project for Bead magazine that needs to be in by December. I know what I'm doing it's just taking the step-by-step photos and the weather issue! It's meant to be a bright day tomorrow so it should be full steam ahead (camera battery on charge as I write!)

I managed to get all of my new earrings photographed last week which is always a relief. Here's some of them.......

These green enamel ovals have been hanging around for a while then I suddenly thought those pretty pink and green czech glass nuggets might go ok with them!

Dogtooth Amethyst and sterling silver hoop earrings made as part of my last Bead project

I twisted the copper wire for these using my Dremel

I'm planning on making more of these in other colours.....

I had fun stamping these copper discs even though I have to do it on my knees on the kitchen floor! The table I work on isn't sturdy enough and you end up with a shadow when you try and stamp on it so everything gets moved to the kitchen ~ hammer, bench block, copper, stamps...... plus at least one cat wondering what the hell I'm doing!



New Look Folksy & A Featured Item!

After a few teething problems yesterday trying to access the newly relaunched Folksy site - I had to install Firefox due to problems with IE8 closing the page, I managed, about an hour later, (wasn't impressed!) to get to see my new improved shop.

I do like the new look but think it's appalling that there were so many bugs on relaunch day............

Anyway, it was nice to see a pair of my enamel earrings in the Featured Items section on the front page, which takes up the entire front page now!

Here's the rest of the lovely items chosen for the page :

All The Reds - Folksy Featured

It was a lovely surprise earlier when I went to sign into my Folksy shop to see my red enamel poppy earrings as part of the current Featured items on the homepage!

There's some really lovely stuff on there at the moment with a red theme. Definitely worth a look!

New Stockists And Catching Up

I've been busy recently making stock for two new stockists! I gave myself two weeks to make 22 pairs of earrings including earwires and oxidising and polishing them all and did it in just over a week working in the afternoons when I'd finished my part-time job. Am I the only one who likes to get things done and out of the way rather than have it hanging over me?!

Here's some of the enamel stuff cooling on my soldering block.

That is NOT our carpet!! It's the doormat by the back door where I took the photo cos it was nice and bright. Good forbid anyone should think that grubby, cat-hairy delight was gracing the entire floor :D

All the earrings were dutifully packed up and sent on their way and can now be found in ArtFully Made, a lovely gift shop run by Tamsyn Simmonds at 14 South Street, Wellington, Somerset and at Good Girl Designs, a shop run by Nicola Hunt at Area One, 2 Old Dairy, Twitter Lane Waddington, Clitheroe in Lancashire.

Catching Up

I've since been trying to catch up and add some new stock to my Folksy shop. I took almost half of it out of the shop for a wholesale order recently and I'm slowly getting there! I have a pile of earrings (14 pairs!) sat waiting for the sun to come out from behind this awful grey sky we've got at the moment. Thurday is looking good in the south east this week so fingers crossed.

Here's a few pairs I did manage to photograph before the grey gloom descended :

Tip: Don't buy a hot pink camera if you're going to photograph shiny things....seemed like a good idea at the time......

copper....

copper & enamel.....

more copper......

   

 experimenting with transparent enamels.....

It's Amazing Where Your Jewellery Can End Up!

A couple of months ago I received an email from Liv at the Wildfowl and Wetland Centre at Arundel in West Sussex which is about an hour's drive from me, asking me if would be interested in a wholesale order for the gift shop at the centre.

After setting up a meeting where I took some of my jewellery to show the manager, Liv and another member of staff and agreeing terms, I waited to hear if the Wetland Centre's head office would agree to them placing an order. They did and a few weeks later I received an order for 40 pieces!

Fantastic, I thought, I can do that! I've just started a new job but hell, I can do that! It took about 2 weeks altogether as most of the pieces are oxidised plus making all the earwires and oxidising and cleaning those up too but I did it. I did take some stock from my Folksy shop to save time and experimented with using a radial disc polisher on my Dremel to clean up some of the oxidised pieces (it worked and saved a lot of time!) and finally everything was ready.

Just a few of the oxidised pieces waiting to be cleaned up!

All bagged up and ready to go followed by a big sigh of relief!

I'd love to show some photos of the Wetland centre too but unfortunately they're copyrighted so I'd better not. I'll be honest I had no idea there was a wetland centre in Arundel. I've been there several times and it turns out the centre is a bit further along a road from The Black Rabbit pub I've visited quite a few times :D



Raspberry Enamel Heart Earrings

It's a fairly bright day today so I thought I'd catch up on some photographing. I managed to get 5 pairs of earrings done and I've just finished editing them including these raspberry pink enamel hearts.

I cut the hearts myself from copper sheet - I don't enjoy sawing metal if I'm honest but I am slowly getting better at it! After filing and sanding the hearts and punching the hanging hole I enamelled the back then enamelled the front with two layer of mauve opaque before adding some transparent raspberry ontop.

I love the effect you get with transparents over opaques. Transparent enamels do need to be washed before using them over opaques to help get rid of some of the "bits" that sometimes contaminate the enamel and leave imperfections in the final result. I've become a bit obssessed when I use my washed transparents and always check them to see if there's any black bits, bits of hair or wire wool in them before using them as once they're fired any bits thats show up cannot be removed - most frustrating!
I'm glad to say these turned out ok : )

Caught In The Act

Charlie my cat that is with his strange rubber fetish.............

He likes to rub against the rubber mallet I use to whack bits of metal with whenever he gets the chance.

He also loves the smell of bleach.

Funny boy  : )

New Projects In "The Vintage Issue" Of Bead Magazine!

The Oct/Nov issue of Bead magazine (out 21st September) features two of my projects!

The theme was "autumn" so I thought antique copper, greens and oranges would fit the bill and came up with a pair of hoop-style wirework earrings with swarovski crystal elements beads in olivine and crystal copper. The earrings are finished with a pair of handmade hoop earwires.

The second project shows how to make the hoop earwires plus another pair of simple earwires.

I also made a sterling silver version with amethyst beads 

The vintage edition looks to be pretty interesting!

A Distinct Lack Of Interest

That's how I'd describe my mood concerning my blog recently. Not because I don't enjoy writing stuff - I do, it's just "other things" have been on my mind.

I started a part-time home carer job recently after 18 months of working as a private carer doing a few hours a day so working for a company again feels a bit weird. There've been a few starting hiccups - not knowing when I would get my days off, cocking up my worksheet then expecting me to work 7 days a week without any notice (er, no!) and the inevitable Saturday night "can you help us out, someone's gone off sick" phone calls. After previously working for another care company for five years sometimes doing 15 hour days without a proper break I vowed when I left never to work nights again so the answer to those phone calls is a definite no! I work mornings and that's it :D I am enjoying the work though and the people I go to are lovely.

On the jewellery front (much better than work!) I've been experimenting with soldering. Nothing earth-shattering, just basic stuff like soldering rings and sweat soldering. I think if I ever fancy a go at bezel setting and more advanced stuff I definitely need to go to a class. I also had a go at solder inlay after seeing it in one of the many books I've bought recently on soldering! I love the idea of using solder to create a design in the metal. The top photo and the one below show earrings I've made with solder inlay. The earrings below were a complete pig to photograph because of the shininess and the reflection from my very pink camera :D

I stamped a design into the metal, flooded it with solder then sanded off the excess to reveal the design. I'd recommend getting a Dremel/flexshaft for this unless you want to spend hours filing and sanding! I'm going to make some more solder inlay designs soon.

I practised my sawing for these heart earrings (not my favourite thing) but practice makes perfect. I'm planning on sawing some more hearts to enamel this weekend too.

Soldered hoop with lampwork bead - I've read that sometimes the beads can crack from the heat as you solder the hoops closed but these worked ok. I positioned tweezers next to the bead to act as a heat sink and just concentrated the heat near the top. I like this design so will probably do it again!

Soldered copper hoops with Czech glass coin bead. I used the stamped design to cunningly hide the solder join :D

New Fold Form And Torch Enamel Earrings

I posted recently about experimenting with fold forming and enamelling - creating a definite division in the surface of the metal then enamelling both sides a different colour as seen in these disc earrings below

Well I've been playing around with the idea again and made two more pairs this time leaving one side of the fold bare copper. I used transparent enamels over opaque - you can achieve some lovely colours that way. 

A bit fiddly but that's all part of the fun :D

Raspberry transparent over ivory

Turquoise transparent over lichen green with a sprinkle of seafoam

Budding Metalsmiths! Great Videos Worth Watching On YouTube

I love browsing YouTube for tutorials on jewellery making techniques. At the moment it's soldering and in my search for helpful videos to watch I've come across some stinkers - you know the one's I mean where you can't see what the person is doing because their hands are in the way, or it's just a series of photos advertising their jewellery or the one's where they don't speak and just play some weird music instead...........

So I was really happy to find a series of videos (30) from Nancy LT Hamilton, a US jewellery maker, that are a joy to watch. You can see and hear her clearly, she knows what she's talking about and she's funny too. Plus she has a workroom to die for!

Nancy covers subjects including all about solder, fancy rivets, how to saw, annealing metal, how to make a ring plus some handy tips. So if you're a budding metal worker who's dying to know how to create a flush rivet or how to make your own fancy twisted wire I'd definitely recommend watching her videos :D

Enamel Experiment

I was browsing the forum on Barbara Lewis's Painting With Fire ning group the other night and saw a photo a member had posted showing how to fire an opalescent enamel correctly. He'd used what looked like a chasing on air fold formed copper disc and looking at it set something off in my brain!

I liked the idea of having a definite break in the surface of the disc which would make enamelling it in two different colours slightly easier than trying to achieve a gap or straight line by my, at times, rather shaky hand :D

So I got the disc cutter out and my torch and mallet and started playing. Made the fold, miraculously pretty well centred I have to say, into the pickle, a quick clean up then started playing with the enamel powders. I really wish I'd taken some photos along the way.......

After counter enamelling I used a small piece of card (a Moo minicard actually!) to cover one side of the front of the disc then sifted the nut brown onto the other side, carefully cleaning up any stray bits of enamel with a small paintbrush then fired it. I did try to sift both colours at the same time to start with but soon realised that wasn't a good idea - some of the seafoam got mixed with the nut brown and I had to abort and start again.

A quick clean up inbetween (enamelling isn't quick) then I sifted the seafoam and fired again. Repeated the whole process with another coat and this was the result...

I decided to pickle the discs again to remove the firescale then oxidised them to black and added some long sterling earwires with a matching czech glass bead.

It got me thinking about other designs.........like how having the fold running top to bottom slightly off centre to allow for the hanging hole would look pretty cool or just enamelling one side and leaving the other plain, textured or stamped which I would oxidise later.

I've certainly got lots of ideas buzzing round my head now. I'll try and remember to take some photos next time too :D



Finished!

The commission I had last week that is.

Not the best photos I've got to admit but my customer was happy :D

  The necklace and earrings will be winging their way to Virginia this morning :D

I Won!

I was very thrilled to see on Wednesday that I was "the chosen one" on Lori Anderson's blog giveaway!

The book Hot Connections Jewelry by Jennifer Chin will soon be winging it's way across the ocean to my front door. I can't wait.

Thanks Lori!

Work In Progress

I had a message from a customer via my Etsy shop a couple of days ago asking if I could make a necklace to go with the lavender enamel earrings I listed recently.

After several messages to and fro we agreed on a design so I made a start yesterday

enamelling several different sized discs. All went smoothly I'm pleased to say!

The design is for three of the discs to hang from a sterling spiral pendant link connected to a disc either side and the discs connected to a chain.

 I'm going to crack on with it today and as soon as I've oxidised the silver and polished it up I'll post a photo of the finished necklace :D